Trump’s Middle East Strategy Is Ambitious but Also Dangerous

 

President Donald Trump this week had a historic tour of the Gulf monarchies in the Middle East, in general.

He went to Saudi Arabia and he met Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto leader of Saudi Arabia. And he cut a huge deal, which promised $600 million of Saudi investment in the United States and well over $130 or $140 million in Saudi purchase of American arms. And he sort of reset the relationship that had been tenuous during the Biden administration.

Then he went to Qatar—which is a rival of Saudi Arabia—and he met the emir. And he kind of topped the Saudi investment because they agreed to buy well over 200 Boeing 777 passengers and 787. That purchase alone could be $200 billion, with maybe a trillion dollars of investment.

At the same time, he met the de facto leader who’s emerging out of the disruption and disintegration of Syria, Ahmed al-Sharaa, who’s had, unfortunately, he’s had a history of terrorist activity. And he’d been associated with al-Qaeda, ISIS. Kind of a nebulous past.

And the subtext of all of these meetings were: We’re going to replace strife with money. We’re all gonna be profitable. And we have to bring the cause of all of this trouble, Iran, into the fold of the Middle East and drop the hostility to Israel.

Notice, of course, that he didn’t go to Israel, although he was trying to elicit support for the continuation of the Abraham Accords with Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

This is very ambitious but it’s also very dangerous. Donald Trump thinks he can cut a deal with Iran so that they would do essentially three things: They would give up their nuclear program; they would stop the subsidies to the terrorist surrogates of the Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis; and they would liberalize their society and reenter the family of nations.

I don’t think that Shia theocracy feels that is their agenda. I think what they’re probably doing, given their prior history, they’re negotiating, drawing out, and hoping they can outlast the Trump administration while they get closer and closer to 90% enrichment.

And they don’t think that Donald Trump, given the MAGA agenda that frowns on unilateral or optional military engagements, especially in the Middle East, will be willing to sacrifice or endanger what has been a spectacular first 100 days, at least in economic terms.

And so, they feel that they’re going to, I think, string Donald Trump along and wait him out and then, maybe, with a Democratic administration, announce that they’ve reached 90% enrichment and have a few bombs.

So, what am I getting at? There’s a couple of fundamental issues here. One is that the MAGA agenda is kind of a neo-isolationist, that we don’t get involved. But Donald Trump himself—as we saw the first administration and as we saw with the Houthis when he bombed them—has a Jacksonian deterrent and foreign policy. And they’re coming into conflict. MAGA people do not want him to unilaterally stop the nuclear threat in Iran. They would prefer negotiations. But negotiations depend on that threat.

By the same token, he’s going to try to get the Saudis and the Middle East sheikhdoms to pump more oil. Pump more oil to not only bring down the price of oil worldwide but really, to be frank, to hurt Russian President Vladimir Putin’s only source of income. And he feels that these two conflicts may be connected.

If he can peel away the Middle East from China and Russia and bring down the price of oil, then Putin, who, rumors have it, increasingly is short men, manpower, and equipment, and wants to make a deal with Ukraine but doesn’t know how he’s going to explain to the Russian people how he lost over a million dead, wounded, and missing Russians—for what? Very little in return. Can he make that argument to the Russian people?

In conclusion, Donald Trump is facing dichotomies with the MAGA agenda and his Jacksonian foreign policy. He’s trying to get the Arab world to drop their hostility to Israel. At the same time, he’s trying to reason—if that’s the right word—with an unreasonable Iranian regime. And he wants oil to go down. I’m not sure that’s gonna help him in the United States. A lot of the frackers and horizontal drillers are—as the oil has dropped—they’re not at a very big profit margin. And yet, Trump wants them to spend more money and pump more and buy more rigs, etc.

So, there’s a lot of things going on. But one thing that’s not going on is we’re not being estranged from the Arab world. We’re not being estranged from Israel. This is not former President Joe Biden mouthing off about the Saudis or the Israelis. It’s a new type of approach that if everybody will just calm down, there’s a great opportunity to make money and be profitable. And that would include the disarmament, nuclearly, of Iran and the inclusion of Israel in the body politic.

Very ambitious.

The Real First 100 Days

 

Supporters talk of “flooding the zone,” believing President Donald Trump is making so many changes so quickly that his opposition is reduced to deer-in-the-headlights infancy.

They must be right when the nation suffers daily Democrat pottymouth videos, vandalism of Teslas, infantile meltdowns at congressional witnesses, rioting against federal agents to protect illegal alien felons, protesting on behalf of women beaters, M-13 gangbangers, human traffickers, and assaulters, and visa-holding violent students praising Hamas terrorists.

In contrast, opponents either claim that Trump’s first three months are either directionless chaos or a Hitlerian nightmare or both.

But what is really happening?

One, Trump is finally addressing the problems that proverbially “cannot go on forever, and so they won’t go on.”

When, if ever, would the Left have closed the southern border? After 10, 30, 50 million illegal aliens?

How many more criminal illegal entrants was the Biden administration willing to allow into American neighborhoods—500,000? One million? Three million?

How long was the world simply going to ignore the human destruction on the doorstep of Europe?

Would former President Joe Biden or former Vice President Kamala Harris have sought a ceasefire? Or would it have taken another 1.5, 3, or even 5 million more dead, wounded, and missing Ukrainians and Russians?

Nor did past administrations ever seek a solution to the massive national debt, much less the uncontrollable budget and trade deficits.

All prior presidents passed the day of judgment on to some vague future presidency, assured that their money printing would at least not blow up on their watch.

All moaned that China was piling up huge trade surpluses while denying its own population the usual modern safety net. They knew Beijing’s aim was to use the trillions of dollars in trade surpluses to build a new massive military, a greater arsenal of nuclear bombs, and a new imperial Belt and Road overseas empire.

Yet no administration did anything but greenlight American outsourcing and offshoring while ignoring Chinese trade cheating and technology theft.

Indeed, prior presidencies appeased and enriched China on the foolish belief that such indulgence would lead to Chinese prosperity, and with such Western-style affluence, soon a globalized, democratic, and supposedly friendly China.

In sum, we just witnessed all at once a 100-day, 360-degree effort to address all the existential challenges that we knew were unsustainable but were either afraid or incompetent to address.

Second, the administration apparently wants to confront the source of these crises and believes it is the progressive project.

The Left maintains real political power not by grassroots popularity, but rather by unelected institutional clout. The party of democracy uses antidemocratic means to achieve its ends of perpetual control.

It wages lawfare through the weaponization of the state, local, and federal courts.

It exercises executive power through cherry-picked federal district and circuit judges and their state and local counterparts.

The permanent bureaucracies and huge federal workforce are mostly left-wing, unionized, and weaponized by a progressive apparat. Their supreme directive is to amalgamate legislative, judicial, and executive power into the hands of the unelected Anthony Faucis, Jim Comeys, and Lois Lerners of the world—and thus to override or ignore both popular plebiscites and the work of the elected Congress.

Over 90% of the media—legacy, network, social, and state—are left-wing. Their mission is not objectivity but, admittedly, indoctrination.

Academia is the font of the progressive project. Ninety percent of the professoriat are left-wing and activist—explaining why campuses believe they are above the rules and laws of the Constitution, the Supreme Court, and the U.S. Congress.

Add into the mix the blue-chip Accela corridor law firms and the globalized corporate and revolving-door political elite.

The net result is clear: Almost everything the vast majority of Americans and their elected representatives did not want—far-left higher education, a Pravda media, biological men destroying women’s sports, an open border, 30 million illegal aliens, massive debt, a weaponized legal system, and a politicized Pentagon—became the new culture of America.

So, Trump is not just confronting unaddressed existential crises but also the root causes of why, when, and how they become inevitable and nearly unsolvable.

His answer is a messy, knock-down-drag-out counterrevolution to reboot the country back to the middle where it once was and where the Founders believed it should remain.

His right and left opponents call such pushback chaotic, disruptive, and out of control.

But the counterrevolution appears disorderly and upsetting, mostly to those who originally birthed the chaos; it certainly does not to the majority of Americans who finally wanted an end to the madness.

Biden’s Enablers Never Told Us Why They Did It

 

Let’s look at the border. President Joe Biden over four years destroyed it. He defanged Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He stopped the congressionally approved wall. The result was 12 million people came in. They entered illegally. They resided illegally. And we have 500,000 of them suspected of criminal backgrounds. And almost every day there is a murder/rape.

But here’s the question. Everybody knows he did it but nobody asked why did he do it? Why did you do the most nihilistic thing in the history of the modern presidency?

I think we’re gonna live with this problem for 50 years. But why did he do it? Why did he say, “You can come in without a COVID-19 vaccination but we are gonna get rid of 8,500 of our U.S. citizens in the military who don’t want to be vaccinated”? Why did he say that you need a Real ID but you don’t if you’re in illegally? Why?

Was it that he wanted new constituents because the agenda didn’t appeal to 51% of the population? Did he think that under early and mail-in voting protocols inaugurated in 2020 that he was gonna be able to have these people vote very quickly? Did he want to grow government and then have a bigger entitlement? Higher taxes? Did he not believe in borders? Was he a globalist?

It was so nihilistic. It was so destructive that we need to know why. Just tell us why you did it. Was it just because you hated half the country and you wanted to destroy it? You hated MAGA? The garbage, semi-fascists? Is that it?

The same existential is why do all these reporters say now, “We were in on the deal, we covered up for Biden”? “The Biden staff did it.” “No, the media did it.” But they all agreed that he was non compos mentis. He was cognitively challenged when he was nominated, when they cleared the nomination field out. They got rid of Pete Buttigeig. They got rid of Sen. Elizabeth Warren. They got rid of Sen. Bernie Sanders. They all disappeared quickly. And then they used this waxen effigy as a veneer.

But why? That was very risky to do that. They all tell us they did it, but they don’t tell us why. Was the idea that good old Joe Biden from Scranton had some conservative remnant vestigial aura about him? And then they could use him and they could tell Jill, Joe, “You get to be president but we’re gonna run it.”

Or was it even worse than that? They thought, “This is what we’ve always been waiting for. This is what Barack Obama said when he wanted a third term and he could phone in a left-wing agenda from his basement without appearing in public.”

In other words, it wasn’t that they were stuck. They saw this as a wonderful opportunity. Use Joe Biden and just have him come in three days a week, stumble through stuff, and then push through the most left-wing, nihilistic, destructive, socialist agenda in history.

It really was, if you look at the border and crime and Afghanistan and two theater wars and the hyperinflation and the $7 trillion that he borrowed. Was that the reason why? Or were they just incompetent, they just didn’t know? They were just, “I don’t know. Who are we gonna nominate? Oh, Joe.” They didn’t think he was that bad.

But please, don’t tell us that you covered it up and think that’s a confession sufficient for the American people. Tell us why you did it. They never tell us why.

So, we had all these polls. They were wrong in 2016. They were wrong in 2020. They lost credibility. And then in 2024, they did it again. As I said earlier, the NPR/PBS poll of then-Vice President Kamala Harris had her winning four points on the night of the election. She lost by a point and a half. They were five and a half points off.

David Plouffe, one of the insiders of the Harris campaign, said he was kind of amazed that all the polls had her ahead when their internal polls—that have to be accurate because you work from them in your campaign strategy and you pay for—not one had her ahead.

So, why would they risk their reputation and lie again in 2024 and be discredited again and give Rasmussen, Insider Advantage, and Trafalgar more and more credibility as the accurate poll? I don’t have that answer.

Was it because they wanted to gin up momentum? They knew she was gonna lose. They thought if they lied, if the Des Moines Register said she was really winning when she lost by 12 points, they’d get more funding. People would say, “Gee-whiz, Trump’s gonna lose. I don’t wanna vote.” Is that the idea?

What was it? Why do they continue to lie? They have to tell us why. It’s not enough just to say, “Politics. We want power.”

What was the strategy to make you do something so egregious? So egregious to destroy the border and cause so much misery. So egregious to foist somebody who was not in control of his own cognitive powers as president with nuclear codes. So destructive to try to influence a campaign by repeatedly lying that the losing candidate—who was losing the whole time—was going to win. We just want to know why.

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Canada Missed Out on a Huge Opportunity

 

This week, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who was newly elected as the prime minister with a majority of seats in the Canadian Parliament, is visiting Washington.

As I speak, he’s been holding sessions with President Donald Trump about the so-called trade war and Trump’s trolling of him about being a 51st state. Let me just address that first.

Donald Trump did not like former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who did not like Donald Trump. And he was so frustrated by the surpluses that Canada kept racking up and their unwillingness to spend the required NATO 2% of gross domestic product investment in munitions that he would troll Canada and say, “We’re the same language, the same people. We could do a lot better job than this guy.”

And of course, he took that very seriously. And then there was an election. Trudeau was a failure. Pierre Poilievre, the conservative candidate, had a 20-point lead. He lost it partly because Carney was the champion of Canadian nationalism and said, “We’re never gonna make a 51st state. Donald Trump has no business doing—”

It’s kind of like what Trump did with Panama and Greenland. It’s a way of “Art of the Deal.” We got China to the—we kind of made it a little bit more irrelevant in Panama. We’ve got some reforms going on. Same with Greenland. We were never going to invade either one.

We’re never gonna make Canada a 51st state. You need a majority vote of the Congress. The Congress is never going to vote to admit Canada because the Left would feel it was an infringement upon their sovereignty. We were imperialists, colonialists. The Right said, “Why do we want another New York or Colorado to screw up the country?”

So, it’s not gonna happen. And Carney knew that, but he ran on it. And he whipped up nationalism. And that was fine. That’s what politicians do. But now he’s in a conundrum. He’s got to come to the White House. Trump knows what he did. So, Trump is reminding him about the 51st state. But there’s two issues and they don’t look good for Canada.

No. 1 is, in 2014, all the NATO countries promised to spend 2% of GDP. And under Trump’s prodding during the first term and then the Ukraine war during President Joe Biden’s term, it has frightened most of them. And there’s only 8 of the 32 nations, about, that have not met their 2% obligation. Canada’s one of them. But it’s one of the least cooperative of the 32 nations.

In other words, it only spends 1.37% of its GDP on defense. It won’t kick in another $40 billion to help arm it. And you could make the argument that it depends on the United States. It looks that if there’s any hostile activity, cartels, they’re down there in Mexico with the United States between them. And nobody is going to proverbially mess with Canada when the United States has it under its nuclear shield, Alaska early warnings, you name it.

So, they know that. And they do not want to spend the money. And they’re shorting their other NATO partners. And they’re derelict and they’re culpable.

The other thing is, they’re running up $63 billion with their trade surplus with their partner. And most of it is because they have a thick, sulfurous crude oil that’s in the middle of the country. And it’s very convenient for them to go right across the border and sell it to us. And we like it. And we can refine it. We have the refineries that can deal with that type of difficult crude.

It’d be very difficult for them to send it all the way to their east or west ports and make the same profit. Ninety-five percent of their oil comes to us. We’re a good customer, in other words. Why would they not then say, “We’ll try to import more poultry, cheese, agricultural products. We can’t get down to zero but let’s—we can cut the trade surplus by $20 or $30 billion. You’re our neighbor”?

But they didn’t do that. And so, he instead whipped up—it was very successful to whip up Canadian nationalism. Very successful to win that election. But then where do you go from that? You go and see Donald Trump and you want to just say, “We’re not gonna be a 51 state. We’re not gonna be a 51 state”?

Does he really believe that the majority of people in Congress are gonna vote to admit Canada? Nobody wants to do that.

So, what am I getting at? He could have had a statesmanlike message both during the election and when he saw Trump. He could have said this: ”Donald Trump is trolling us. We’re friends with the United States. He’s trying to needle us so that we spend more money on NATO and we lower our surplus, which is growing very big. And we’re gonna do that. We’re gonna negotiate. Don’t take him serious. He’s just doing this like he did to Panama. We’re good friends. He kids us. We kid him.”

But he didn’t do that. He tried to whip it up. And it was successful. But once you whip it up and you get that hostility, then you’ve gotta go deal with him. And then you’ve gotta tell him, “I’m not gonna spend $40 billion on our defense. We’re going to subsidize you on defense. And we’re not gonna lower that.”

That’s not gonna work. It’s not gonna work. And so, I think that he can say, he’ll leave the meeting and say, “I told him we’re not gonna be a 51st.” That was an irrelevant misadventure. It was going nowhere and he knew it.

But the two issues that he knew were important—that they should man up and pay their 2% and help defend not only NATO but the North American continent, which they had done brilliantly in the past—he didn’t want to talk about. Or he’d say they’d do it in five years. “Five years, we’ll do it.” No, you’ve already been derelict for 11 years.

Or he could have said, “We don’t run up big surpluses with our friends. We’re not Mexico. We’re much closer to you. And we’re gonna work on this. And we’re gonna try to import. We’ll work it down. This is”—no. No.

He created his nationalist paradigm. It got him elected. And now he owns it. And it’s not gonna work with Donald Trump. I wish it would but it’s not because if you want to alienate the United States and you want to take seriously the “Art of the Deal” trolling and sort of laugh it off or, better yet, the Panamanians knew what they were doing. They were getting too close to China. They were surrendering partial sovereignty. And they backed off. And it’s going to be a beautiful relationship with us.

But Canada just couldn’t do that. And I think they will eventually.

Death of a Video Game Console: How Each Generation Said Goodbye

 

Nintendo closes out the end of an era in 2025 with the introduction of the Nintendo Switch 2 and gradual sunsetting of the original Nintendo Switch. This shift in focus to the new console won’t be overnight, of course, and rarely is whenever console publishers transition to a fresh generation. The first Switch generation was an especially prosperous one for Nintendo, with over 150 million units shipped worldwide and counting, making it Nintendo’s best-selling home console of all-time and second only to the PlayStation 2 as the best-selling home console overall.

With a player base that large, Nintendo has to be tactful how it eventually phases out its support for the Switch and maintains continued interest in its overarching brand. That makes us nostalgic too for how previous major home consoles eventually made their respective final bows, wrapping up fondly remembered eras. Here’s a look back on how each major console from the past several decades ended their fan-favorite runs.

Nintendo Entertainment System

The NES not only revived the video game industry in North America after its cataclysmic crash in 1983, but completely dominated it into the early ‘90s. By 1990 the NES—along with its Japanese counterpart, the Famicom—was the best-selling console ever at that time with more American households having the console than PCs. As such, Nintendo’s support for the NES continued long after the launch of the Super Nintendo, with Japan going as far as to continue manufacturing Famicoms for its domestic market until September 2003.

Many of the last games released in the twilight years for the NES were ports of Super Nintendo titles with a significantly less intensive technical presentation. These include NES ports of Mario’s Time Machine, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters, and Wario’s Woods, all released in 1994 and the last of which being the final game released for the console in North America. Over 30 years later, the NES’ tenure remains one of the longest-running and most triumphant generations for any console.

Sega Genesis/Mega Drive

Also known as the Mega Drive outside of the U.S., the Sega Genesis was the console that gave Sega a prominent foothold in the North American market. In trying to gain a technical edge against its competitors, Sega began producing console peripherals for the Genesis, most notably the Sega CD in 1991 and Sega 32X in 1994, each with their own game libraries. Though Sega continued to produce games for the base Genesis, it saw the 32X as a stopgap effort until the Sega Saturn could be launched in 1994 in Japan and ‘95 in the U.S.

Unfortunately for Sega, savvy gamers already knew that the Saturn was coming. So when combined with the high price point for the 32X peripheral, they discreetly avoided it. This meant the library of 32X games released in the Genesis’ final months, which included early 3D Sega games like Virtua Fighter and Star Wars Trilogy Arcade, went largely ignored. The final 32X game was 1996’s The Amazing Spider-Man: Web of Fire while 1997’s NHL 98 closed out the Genesis on a whimper.

Super Nintendo

The Super Nintendo Entertainment System reaffirmed Nintendo’s place atop the worldwide video game industry, even as it faced stiff competition from Sega and Sony. Even as the Nintendo 64’s 1996 launch loomed, Nintendo continued to support the SNES in its final years. Indeed, some of the most beloved SNES games were originally released in 1996 and 1997, giving the console the fond farewell that cemented its vaunted place in gaming history.

Among the memorable games released in the final stretch for the SNES were Super Mario RPG, Donkey Country 3, Harvest Moon, and The Lost Vikings 2. The last licensed game ever released for the SNES was a 1998 port of Frogger, almost as an afterthought for the console. As far as endings go, the Super Nintendo, like the SNES before it, had a great conclusion to its best-selling run.

Sega Saturn

Between the original success of the Genesis and loving reappraisal of the Dreamcast, the Sega Saturn remains something of the overlooked middle child. This is in no small part because of how badly Sega handled the console’s rollout for the North American market, from a surprise announcement that caught developers outside of Japan off-guard, an uncompetitive price point in comparison to the original PlayStation, and Sega of America deciding not to localize hundreds of games created by Japanese developers. With that in mind, the Saturn generation lasted four years, as Sega rushed to replace it with its successor, the Dreamcast.

This fast-tracked decision effectively hobbled the Saturn in its final year when news about the Dreamcast’s development leaked while Sega was still nominally supporting the Saturn in public. Console and game sales in North America cratered with only seven Saturn games released in the territory for the entirety of 1998, the last being a localization of Magic Knight Rayearth. Given the Saturn’s greater success in Japan than overseas markets, Sega continued to support the Saturn after the Dreamcast’s November 1998 launch, primarily through third-party titles and boxed sets, with the last game released for the console in Japan being 2000’s Final Fight Revenge by Capcom.

PlayStation

The PlayStation, later rebranded as the PSX and then PS1, marked Sony’s triumphant entry into the home console industry in 1994. Buoyed by its games published on compact discs, as opposed to expensive cartridges, and strong third-party developer support, PS1 became the bestselling console of its generation and the bestselling overall for its time. The PS1 continued to sell well into the subsequent generation, even well into the lifespan of its 2001 successor, the PlayStation 2.

Given the sheer number of its player base and continued flourishing third-party support, the PS1 saw multiplatform sports and licensed titles published for it through 2006, though the last North American title was published for it in 2004. The last major title for the console was arguably 2002’s Final Fantasy Origins, which was just a compiled remaster of the first two mainline games in the series. Sony officially ended support for the PS1 in 2006, the same year it launched the PlayStation 3.

Nintendo 64

Though the Nintendo 64 launched strongly and revolutionized the gaming industry in shifting to 3D games, it also saw Nintendo lose its global top spot in the console wars. Surpassed commercially by PlayStation, Nintendo spent the final years of the N64 focusing on development of the GameCube while extending the life and power of the N64 through its crimson Expansion Pak peripheral. This upgrade in technical performance led to some of the most impressive N64 or console games in its final years on the market.

The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, Perfect Dark, and Banjo-Tooie were all released in 2000, each taking advantage of the Expansion Pak boost in their own way. By 2001 Nintendo completely reprioritized its strategy to support the launch of the Game Boy Advance and GameCube, but still put out bonafide bangers like Mario Party 3 and Conker’s Bad Fur Day. By 2002 Nintendo officially pulled the plug on the N64, releasing a handful of sports titles to close out the generation.

Dreamcast

Sega’s final home console came out the gate swinging with a launch window that included Power Stone, Sonic Adventure, Soulcalibur, The House of the Dead 2, and NFL Blitz 2000. However, the Dreamcast faced continued stiff competition from the original PlayStation along with news about development on the upcoming PlayStation 2, Nintendo GameCube, and something Microsoft was calling Xbox. With the incoming generation of home consoles reputedly more powerful than the Dreamcast, support for Sega continued to waver, with a remodeled, cheaper PS1 outselling the Dreamcast during the 2000 holiday season as a final nail in Sega’s console coffin.

Sega ceased releasing new Dreamcast games in North America by February 2002, closing out its support for the market with NHL 2K2 almost as an afterthought. Like the Saturn, the Dreamcast saw longer support in its native Japan, with March 2004’s puzzle party game Puyo Puyo Fever closing out the generation for good. By December 2001, Sega began developing games for its former competitors, signaling a significant shift to focus on software development rather than hardware, releasing both Sonic Advance for the Game Boy Advance and Sonic Adventure 2: Battle for the GameCube that month.

Xbox

Though Microsoft’s first foray into the home console industry was off to a shaky start with a hilariously oversized controller and weak launch library, it eventually outsold the GameCube. That said, the console also stands as the shortest generation to date from Microsoft, with the company rushing out its successor, the Xbox 360, almost exactly four years after the original Xbox’s November 2001 launch. That means games initially intended for the Xbox were reconfigured as 360 titles, sometimes late in development, to bolster the next console’s launch library.

2004 saw the strongest first-party games released for the original Xbox, including Halo 2, Fable, and Ninja Gaiden Black before Microsoft shifted its priorities. The majority of games released for the original Xbox after 2005 were multiplatform sports titles, with only three games released for the console in the entirety of 2007 and only Madden NFL 09 released for it in 2008. The original Xbox was, comparatively, a flash in the pan, with Microsoft quickly looking ahead to the future.

GameCube

The GameCube era was a dark one for Nintendo as the company slid behind Sony and Microsoft in the home console industry in terms of units shipped. This decline, coupled with difficulties in developing games for hardware, meant the console saw dwindling third-party support. As Nintendo readied to launch the motion sensor-oriented Wii in the 2006 holiday season, it repurposed games originally planned for the GameCube for its successor instead.

One highlight in the GameCube’s closing window was Resident Evil 4, released at the beginning of 2005 as a GameCube-exclusive before Capcom decided to port it to the PlayStation 2 by the year’s end. A handful of movie tie-in games, like Ratatouille and TMNT, along with the usual multiplatform sports games, filled the gap. As the Wii quickly gained momentum following its breathtakingly successful launch, Nintendo quietly pulled the plug on the GameCube by 2007. However, one major highlight was The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, a fan favorite developed as GameCube’s swan song in 2006… before being delayed so it could simultaneously release as a launch title on the Wii.

PlayStation 2

Still the best-selling home console of all time, the PlayStation 2 significantly outsold its immediate competition and helped push Sega out of the hardware console industry for good. This success was also in small part due to the console featuring a built-in DVD drive and being priced competitively compared to other DVD players on the market at the time. Like its predecessor, the PS2 had an especially long lifespan, one that endured through the eventual launch of the PlayStation 4.

Leading up to the PS3 launch in late 2006, the PS2 saw the release of some of its most acclaimed games, including its port of Resident Evil 4, Shadow of the Colossus, Gran Turismo 4, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Guitar Hero, Ōkami, Devil May Cry 3, and Final Fantasy XII. The last game ever released for the PS2 was Pro Evolution Soccer 2014, released in 2013. Sony ended post-release support for the PS2 in Japan in 2018, closing out its most successful era to date.

Wii

After losing industry dominance in its previous two generations, Nintendo catapulted itself back on top with the Wii, which replaced the GameCube as its main home console in late 2006. With its intuitive motion controls and a robust library of games, many of the most acclaimed being console exclusives, the Wii became Nintendo’s bestselling console at the time. By 2013, one year after the launch of the Wii U, Nintendo began ceasing production on new Wii consoles and cutting back online services, with the last major services discontinued in 2019.

The Wii’s last real banner year was 2011, which saw the release of Kirby’s Return to Dream Land and The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, the latter of which being the last major console exclusive. That said, Nintendo was really focused on launching its last handheld console, the Nintendo 3DS, that year and preparing for the Wii U. Amusingly, the Wii kept receiving third-party support and new installments of Just Dance from Ubisoft until 2019.

Xbox 360

The most successful Xbox console to date is Microsoft’s sophomore effort, the Xbox 360, which launched a full year ahead of its generational counterparts in 2005. Though outsold by the Wii, the 360 closed the gap between Microsoft and Sony—even as it was also ultimately outsold by the PS3. What the 360 revolutionized was a digital marketplace for games, allowing players to purchase and download titles straight to their consoles, a feature that became an industry standard.

In the years and months leading up to the launch of the Xbox One, the 360 saw its firmware updated to match Microsoft’s other user interfaces while the console began incorporating its own motion sensor gameplay. Branded the Kinect, the peripheral was launched in 2010 to lukewarm response for many of its titles. Though Microsoft continued to support the 360’s online capabilities until 2024, the last two major games for the console were 2012’s Halo 4 and 2013’s Gears of War: Judgment.

PlayStation 3

The PlayStation 3 stumbled at its 2006 launch with its significantly higher price point than the competition and complex hardware architecture, making development for the console particularly difficult. Though price cuts and cheaper models of the PS3 improved its standing, it never got close to catching up with Nintendo’s highly successful Wii. As a result, Sony ended its support for the PS3 faster than it had the PS2 or PS1, shifting its focus to the PlayStation 4.

Despite Sony quickly reprioritizing itself for the PS4’s 2013 launch, the PS3 saw some of its most iconic titles released in its final years. The Last of Us, Journey, and multiplatform titles like Mass Effect 3 and Grand Theft Auto V closed out the PS3 era. By 2017 Sony ceased hardware production on the PS3 and, while planning to close the PlayStation Store for the platform in 2021, fan outcry led Sony to reverse this decision, leaving online support running.